Maurice Harkless has the look of an NBA player. More importantly, he is an NBA Player. Better yet, he should become an all star and multiple time member of the all defensive team. He was great value with the 15th pick. Harkless has the traits on a NBA player and history going for him.

Here are the positives. Andre Iguodala and Doug Collins will be an immense help teaching the defensive aspects of basketball to Harkless, and he has all the tools to excel on that end on the floor. Philadelphia is a very good passing team, which is a far cry from what Harkless experienced in his one year stint at St Johns. Lastly, Philadelphia has good players. The better your 4 teammates on the court are, the better you will likely be.

That being said, he is coming into a situation that isn’t conducive to maximizing his talents. It’s likely that Philadelphia is one of the 5 worst teams in the NBA for Maurice Harkless to be a rookie on. Playing time, a lack of team 3pt shooting (attempts not %) and lack of inside scoring presence are issues for the Sixers that will hinder Maurice’s development in his rookie season.

However, the positives of drafting Harkless far outweigh the negatives as the negatives are short term issues and the positives will present long term returns.

Now let’s look at history and the overwhelming evidence that Harkless was a great pick.
.Continue Reading

That’s right, 19-year old Maurice Harkless (6-8; 207) is the latest “tweener” forward to join the Sixers roster and to be honest the selection is a bit of surprise, especially considering that Terrence Jones of Kentucky and Arnett Moultire were / are still on the board. Not one of the online “experts” we researched nor a single scout that I talked with prior to the draft predicted the Sixers would go in this direction, but according to Rod Thorn everyone in the Sixers front office was “on board” with the pick.

Chad Ford of ESPN.com had Harkless (15.3 ppg. & 8.6 rpg.) going 16th to Houston, while draftexpress.com predicted Harkless would be selected at number 19 by the Magic.